


Life is the Sum of All Its Parts

by RoseWithAllHerThorns



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Child Neglect, Experimental Style, Gen, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Lil Cal and Jack Noir also show up, POV Dave's Bro | Beta Dirk Strider
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-05
Updated: 2019-06-05
Packaged: 2020-04-08 12:50:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 845
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19107433
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RoseWithAllHerThorns/pseuds/RoseWithAllHerThorns
Summary: A series of moments from Dave's "birth" to Bro's death, presented out of chronological order.





	Life is the Sum of All Its Parts

**Author's Note:**

> If the paragraph ends with an "-", that means there's a scene change.
> 
> Despite never using Bro's name, it's his point of view.

He planned for every contingency, but not for Dave crying. He hasn’t had a roommate in years- doesn’t deal well with company, and here’s thirteen years worth. It sets his teeth on edge. It’s not like he’s a baby. Developed enough to crawl, developed enough to grasp- Dave’s probably only a few months from walking. Makes him wonder what shitty nursemaid the kid had, since he’s crying like this.

He gets out a bottle of formula, and Dave just turns his head away. So he checks to see if the snot shit himself, and, nope. Maybe he will soon. But Dave just keeps crying, and crying, and so into the closet it goes. Freedom at last. It’s babyproofed, if not soundproofed, and the muffling means that he can relax in another room and not bother about the kiddo, so he leaves the formula in the closet and goes to-

Sleep is tempting and like any fatale worth her salt it will kill him so when he falls he rolls and instead of void he thinks only of himself: muscles twitching to move out of danger, and he is the center of space and the universe and every star and he will kill this motherfucking chess monarch when it fucking kills-

 _Him_. Shades hide eyes that don’t glare because that’s giving in and like fuck he’ll ever surrender, especially to a loser like this. The highest room in the tallest tower, that’s where Dave lives and because he left the room once, this jackass wants to ask about his health and his personal life. Implying Dave’s a person, he thinks, and then a muscle twitches in his face because wait, yeah, he is. Forgot that. Feels fake.

“Come back when the sun explodes,” he says, and shuts the door fast. Bets that if the pied piper de pipes was here he’d tell him to shut it slower so it slams on his victim’s hand as it reaches out and-

Fails, but they’re hilarious, so he always makes time to watch Dave scratch his way across a record or a fake rail. Yesterday Dave found a glitch he hadn’t tracked down in the code because he jumped at a sound and his avatar ran off the side through the wall. Kids. It’s hard to believe he was ever that clumsy. There’s no photographic evidence to prove it, so it never-

Happened to step onto a pike, he’d slice out his throat. But the carapace won’t do it, he dodges like a warrior and there’s bloodlust in his eyes like warriors should have and probably the monster’d choke him with his tentacles, which isn’t a warrior thing but he bets he’d enjoy it, wouldn’t he, and he yanks his own sword out of the fabric of reality and-

Dave actually comes up to him, and he didn’t send him a note, so he watches him work up the courage, microsecond by microsecond. His bro’s gaze flicks everywhere, minute little twitches of his neck to go with it, but they always come back to him. Weird how he has new shades. They’re rounded off like his personality is and his scrawny little frame isn’t.

“Hey. Can I- buy this?” Forks over a photograph of some stuffed animal. Isn’t thirteen too old for this? Circled in red, held in someone’s hands in the promo pic. A prop in someone else’s life. Maybe he’ll use its guts as confetti, but no, it’s-

Dave, and he’s gotten an upgrade. He’s got a lash for a tail and wings he doesn’t need and a sword he wields like he knows how to gut someone. It’s all raw frenzy and chaos. The first time they’ve fought together and not against, and he feels the pulse of the battle. It beats harder and harder the same way they’ll beat the joker.

Until it skips a beat. The pulse stops. The opponent stops. Dave stops. No amount of training can make him anything but thirteen, but Dave recognizes danger by now. Dave waits behind the grotesque green glow of the joker. His features have changed, look more like some dog now. No, a crackling wolf. He braces himself but it won’t stop anyone when the sword-

Skewers Lil Cal, watches him slide down the hilt of the sword, pushed down by gravity yet kept up by the literal katana jutting through his gut. Poetic. He needs to devote a couple years to becoming a more proficient master wordsmith, find the right words in the right order. Futile hatred churns in his gut.

The pads of his fingers press against his eyes under the shades, soothing what he’s decided is a burgeoning headache.

He only has to figure out what he’ll do with the rest of today. Then he’ll plan out tomorrow. The day after he’ll forgive Cal and sew him up, well enough you can’t see that the wound was ever there to begin with. It's the realest companion he has in this acid trip of a life that burns all the way down his throat.


End file.
